Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > June > 18
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Review: Verizon MiFi 2200
If you are like me (and I pity you if this is the case), you want Internet wherever you go, whatever you’re doing. You want it at the supermarket when you want to find out if you’re being ripped off on cantaloupes and you want it in the bathroom while you’re checking out your hair in the mirror (after you’ve washed your hands thoroughly, of course).
Depending on your phone situation, you may or may not be on a higher-speed 3G network (as of this posting, I’m still using a first-generation iPhone, which has Wi-Fi, but no 3G); you may find yourself in situations all the time where, despite what seem like generous Wi-Fi hotspots around town, you’re just not in an area with Internet. Your phone may fall back on a slower network, but your laptop is probably out of luck.
Verizon’s MiFi 2200, dubbed an “Intelligent Mobile Hotspot,” is a slick solution for these woes; it’s basically a WiFi hotspot in a sleek, glossy black box the size of a credit card (and about as thick as an iPod Touch). It charges via a USB adapter and provides a good-sized WiFi network for your phone, laptop or any other device that can connect to it with a provided password.
It can also connect directly, via USB, to a computer and provide a direct Internet conduit that way. As long as you’re safely in a Verizon service area, you’ll have good upload and download speeds. And since Verizon’s national network is pretty robust, it makes the MiFi an idea choice for frequent travelers or those who have to be constantly connected at high speeds.
What’s the down-size? For one thing, it’s not made of magic. It’s not going to work in remote locations where you wouldn’t get regular Verizon phone service and, in several weeks of usage, I found instances where either the device didn’t pick up the network (once, curiously, right off of IH-35 in New Braunfels), or would require a quick restart to begin providing Internet access again.
Luckily, the MiFI itself is very easy to deal with when these issues come up: it has a single button that you press to turn it off and on and usually a simple reboot was all that was necessary to get things in order again.
How were the download/upload speeds? In my experience, it functioned very similarly to a home Wi-Fi network, with very little lag and reasonable speeds even when viewing online video or downloading big files (I used it on Wednesday to update to the iPhone’s 3.0 software without incident).
Because it’s so tiny, you can only expect so much battery life from the MiFi. On a charge, it lasts most of a day with sporadic use, but starts warning you with a blinking red light when it’s low on power. There are options to have the device shut down automatically when there’s been no activity for a predetermined amount of time (anywhere from five minutes to an hour). That’s a nice way to save the battery if you forget to turn the MiFi off.
I was concerned when I heard about pricing for the MiFi: you can pay $40 a month for 250 megabytes of data and 10 cents per megabyte of overage charge. For $60, you get 5 gigabytes a month and 5 cents per megabyte of overage charges. If you’re a heavy Internet user and you’re using this as your primary way to connect, you might be asking for trouble, but in about two weeks of using the MiFi pretty frequently for Web video, e-mail and browsing, I only used about 354 megabytes of data:
You can find out at any time by connecting it to your computer how much data you’ve used as you go.
The MiFi is a good example of a next-gen Internet device that performs as promised as long as you’re willing to pay $40-$60 for a broadband connection. Given that you can share the Internet connection among several Wi-Fi devices at the same time, it seems perfect for social networking meet-ups or business meetings (provided you don’t mind sharing your password).
It costs $99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a two-year contract. For those who don’t want a contract, you can buy it for $270 and pay as you go, $15 for 24 hours of access.
It’s too rich for my blood to sign on for one of my own, but those who can afford it will fall in love with the simple, pretty and useful MiFi 2200.
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